himself ) catch sight of the funeral procession from their win-
dow. They don’t know who has died. Sally does not care. Chris
cares to the point of realizing that they are losing contact with
ordinary people everywhere, as they drift into complicity with
the rise of the Nazis. “In a few days, I thought, we shall have
forfeited all kinship with ninety-nine percent of the population
of the world, with the men and women who earn their living,
who insure their lives, who are anxious about the future of
their children.”^13
Nowhere does the musical use those lines. Instead, it makes
“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” into the shared ubiquitous num-
ber of the show, the number almost every character seems to
know, and lets the number spread into ensemble voicing in the
party scene, leaving only the principal characters “outside the
circle,” unable to speak for anything but a defiant isolation.
The two women of the love-stories voice this isolation most
clearly. Here is Fräulein Schneider after she realizes that she
cannot run the risk of marrying a Jew:
All my life I have managed for myself—and it is too old a habit to
change. I have battled alone, and I have survived. There was a
war—and I survived. There was a revolution—and I survived. There
was an Inflation—billions of marks for one loaf of bread—but I
survived! And if the Nazis come—I will survive. If the Communists
come—I will still be here—renting these rooms! For—in the end—
what other choice have I? This—is my world!” (pp. 98–99)Sally Bowles expresses the code of individualism from a young
person’s perspective, where it seems even more desolate. When
she breaks up with Cliff, she says, “I meet someone and I make
all sorts of enormous promises....And I suddenly realize I
can’t keep those promises—not possibly! Because I am still
me!” (p. 110).
That is how the book makes the point. The numbers make
the point more effectively, especially the title song, in which
Sally pretends to praise the sociability of cabaret life while she
is really focusing on her strange role model, a character unseen
THE ENSEMBLE EFFECT 95
(^13) Isherwood, “Sally Bowles,” p. 49.